THE FAMINE MONTH.
THE Russians, besides spring, summer, autumn, and winter, name a fifth season between the autumn rains and the winter frost. It is called " Rasputnya," and its practical meaning is "the time when no man can traveL" If the animals of England were to make a calendar, they might give some such name to the month of March, and distin- guish it, in the common tongue of the woods, as "the season when no beast can eat." Had not the eighteenth century discovered turnips, even our domestic animals would be starving. There has been practically no growth of grass or wild herbs since late September, and all that remained would be eaten bare. Hay, the neglect to make which enabled Elizabeth's soldiers to capture the cattle of the Irish in the valleys in winter, and so to subdue the country, is an artificial product, of which the grass, if left to grow long in the fields, and die where it stands, would not take the place, and none of our evergreen trees except the holly, which deer eat greedily, is fit for animal food. But as things are, practically all the sheep in England, except the ewes with lambs, are on short commons, all the "rough stock" go hungry—a form of Lenten fast which perhaps does them no harm—and the bird population of our woods, gardens, and fields is at its very lowest. The blackbirds and thrushes, which have hung round the gardens all the winter, then often disappear, probably to the riversides and the southern coasts of Cornwall and Devon, though some few have actually begun to build their nests. The starlings move away to the coasts and marshes. Even the rooks are often half starved while building their nests, and the woods have been cleared of the last nut, haw, and acorn. This is the time when every sensible keeper feeds his wild pheasants most liberally, other- wise they must either come to the stackyards or be so starved that their laying powers are impaired, for the only item in which this large imported bird has failed to become acclima- tised is that it still lays its eggs rather too early.
There is almost no insect life by day. The very earliest flowers are visited by no single pair of wings of bee or fly. In the shrubberies, in the copses, where last year's wood was cut, and the ground will in April be a mass of flowers, there are often a few blossoms even in late January, a cowslip, a prim- rOse or two, a few daisies. The March winds kill these off, all except the primroses, but aconite takes their place in yellow beds, the wood violets blossom close to earth, and in the grass walks, in the gardens, and in the old orchards the snowdrops hang thick. Never a fly, or gnat, or bee ever settles on these March flowers. They look as if preserved in ice, cold and untouched in a dead world, like that in pre. historic ages when there were no living things but plants. Later, when the April sun has warmed the earth and the rains have wetted it kindly, the humble-bees will come out, boisterous and hungry, and hurl themselves into the crocus flowers, and revel on the saffron. But the March crocus is used as food not by the insects, but by the sparrows, who regard the blossoms in the light of early strawberries. It is evidence of the scarcity of natural food that even the sparrow, parasite as he is, and always able to command a meal of other people's leavings, looks on the crocuses as a special gift planted by his earthly providence, man, as something nice for dessert in the famine month. He pulls the blossoms to pieces not for mischief, but to get at the saffron, which he incontinently devours. Our two earliest honey-bearing flowers, and the only two, except the crocus, are the pink American currant and the almond. On the first hot April day the former swarms with bees Almost every grape-like branch of red blossom has its honey-seeker busy below it, and should an almond tree blossom late it is always discerned by the scouts from distant hives. But while the March winds blow the almond may cover its branches with a pink snow of blossom, and no bee comes. Now the bees are the very earliest of all insects to "get about" after the winter sleep, because they keep the hive warm all through the dead months, and provision it and are always ready to go out prospecting, if only the sun will shine. Sometimes, in a sudden thaw, when the sun shines hot, a bee may be seen hovering over the melting snow, and wondering what has happened to the flowers.
At the end of the month the English creatures which hibernate for the express purpose of avoiding famine waken up, come out of their winter quarters, and very nearly starve. These creatures are naturally those which live either on insects, which the cold gradually destroys, or which hiber- nate to avoid it, or are insects and molluscs which live upon leaves said plants, the supply of which ceases altogether after January. It is sometimes forgotten how many of our native creatures do hibernate, or do so partially, to avoid famine, a period of retreat most serviceable to them at the present season. The first place must be given to the insect-eating mammals. The insect-eating birds all fly away to the South. The mammals cannot move, so they suspend existence. Of these insect-eating beasts the hedgehog is the most representative. He belongs to an order, found in most parts of the globe, placed between the carnivora and the rodents. From January to April he sleeps, and if he wakes in the famine month may be seen wandering about by day- light, desperately hungry and foodless. The badger is partly insectivorous, and partly feeds on roots and bulbs. But we may take it that his main store comes from snails, slugs, worms, wasp-grubs, beetles, and the like, besides any flesh he can catch or find. He, too, sleeps through most of March. The dormouse does the same, and the squirrels probably find their stock of nuts growing very low, and impossible to replenish. The disappearance of insect food is not only caused by death. Probably the main pabulum of the larger so-called insect feeders is provided by the millions of large snails slugs, beetles, and, in addition, by earthworms and grubs and lame. The worms go down deep into the ground in March. They cannot stand the drying winds, and the beetles and grubs bury them- selves also. The countless millions of ants of all kinds, the eggs of which provide food for very many birds, and possibly for the smaller mammals, descend to great depths below the surface, and are invisible till April. All the chrysalides of butter- flies or moths are either underground or hidden in cocoons. There are no caterpillars, for there are no leaves for them to eat, though the soft-bodied slugs seem able to come forth in all winds and weathers, and gnaw the tops of the snowdrop leaves. But the big garden snails represent the greatest loss of animal food to the birds and to the smaller beasts. A big snail is probably the largest morsel easily obtainable. The contents of its shell are as large as those of a fresh-water musseL It is a meal in itself for a thrush, and four or five must go far to make dinner for a hedgehog. As there is nothing whatever left for these snails to eat, they creep away into holes in walls and hedge-bottoms, fasten up the mouths of their shells, and hibernate till the warm weather comes, They may be found by persons knowing in their habits, and are gathered in scores in suitable places, all sealed up and sleeping. Near Swindon they are hunted for by connoisseurs, taken home in bags, cooked, and eaten.
A fall of snow late in the month shows by its effects on the birds how narrow is the margin of subsistence. March snow kills the starlings wholesale, and utterly paralyses the usually wild lapwings. These, by constantly shifting their ground from the coast to the ploughed fields inland during the winter, do continue to live and keep fat. Last year a sudden fall of snow took place in the Eastern Counties at the close of March. It was not very heavy, but near Sheringliam, in Norfolk, the plover were seen sitting about in the fields, close to the golf links, and allowing persons to approach within thirty yards of them.
The only places where life seems still moving and food present are by the running rivers. Running water, which main- tains a more even temperature than air, is prolific at all seasons of some forms of life, the microscopic creatures which swarm in it almost unseen. Their eggs are laid in winter, and hatch rapidly. In early March the myriads of these creatures, clinging like film and glue to the water weeds, are the main food of fish. Yet even then the trout are thin and hungry. But the even temperature of the waters is all the time quietly breeding the ephemeridx, such as the "March brown," or inciting their larva to come up to the surface and climb the grass stems to the upper air, there to become flies and, descend again on .the -water as :food for fishes. But though there are some evergreen, or everlasting, water weeds, these are in the minority. The greater number of the sub- aquatic plants, and all those like the sedges and reeds on the margins, die each year when the frost comes, just like land plants. Thus most of the innumerable water snails and other creatures which feed on these descend and bury themselves in the mud just as the land snails do. Their youngr which in summer swarm upon the weeds, studding them like shots upon a gut line, are not yet in evidence, and the fish are on short rations like the birds and beasts. What prevents a great and annual loss of animal life during this the season of greatest strain and endurance is the astonishing speed of spring when it does begin. A real rise in temperature summons all the birds from the trees, the insects from their hiding-places, the birds from the South, the green shoots from the ground, the grass stems from the earth, wakens the hiber- nating mammals and molluscs, summons the earthworms to the surface, and sets free the clouds of ephemeridte on the waters literally in a few hours, and in the cases of the insects in a few minutes, of real warmth. After famine a feast, is the rule of Nature ; and Nature's feasts are on a lavish scale, ilways compensating for the fasts which have preceded them.
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